Oh, to see former US Rep. J.D. Hayworth (GOP) trounce current Sen. John McCain ("Maverick") in Arizona's Republican Senate primary on August 24. Hayworth announced his candidacy this week.

McCain is everything wrong with the Republican Party, and despite the deep despair the Obama administration inspires, I still think (I think) a McCain presidency would have been somehow worse in the long run (if there is a long run ...).

A McCain administration would have been merely lousy. But it would have left the republic adrift in some similar and significant ways -- the disastrously prosecuted war, the drumbeat for illegal alien amnesty (one of Hayworth's major claims to fame is his staunch determination to protect US borders). More important, a McCain White House would also have failed to ignite tea-party activism just as it would have tied institutional GOP hands for the duration. In other words, hitting Obama-bottom with an existential crash just might -- might -- save us by triggering a rejuvenating political Big Bang, something that would have seemed impossible in an oxygen-deprived McCain admininstration.

As for veep candidate and star-powerful Sarah Palin? Her raw political instincts were always better for this country than any of the final three (McCain, Obama, Biden) -- which, granted, isn't saying much -- but with her self-respect-cancelling and politically contradictory endorsement of John McCain in the Arizona Senate race, I confess to hoping that both of these "mavericks" are finally put out to pasture.